David Dadi Perlmutter is leaving Intel on February 20 2014. The charismatic executive is currently and Executive Vice President, General Manager of Intel's Architecture Group, and the Chief Product Officer notified the SEC that he wants out.

We have noticed that Dadi, a chap who is supposed to be in charge of products at Intel, didn’t take the stage at IDF 2013 but we did not know that he was already working on his exit strategy. Perlmutter was a direct and serious competitor to Brian Krzanich for the CEO post, and as you can imagine Krzanich and Renee James won.

The exec who loses a leadership challenge is usually not in a great position and this is most likely the primary reason for Didi to leave Intel. Perlmutter and the chaps from his group have brought us some great products over the years, including many Core chips that are now in the fourth generation and still going strong.

Intel will have a tough time replacing Perlmutter. The company still faces a real problem in mobile and lacks success in smartphone and tablet market, with slight signs of improvement in the tablet space with Atom 3000-series parts, codenamed Bay Trail-T, but it has practically no success with Atom-powered smartphones.

Catching up with the ARM alliance won’t be easy, with or without Perlmutter, yet companies like Qualcomm could really put Perlmutter’s talent to good use.

Perlmutter said is he is leaving the company “to pursue other opportunities in his life and professional career.”